Gravity in Your Brain ft. Neil deGrasse Tyson!

How would you play catch in space?
Catch would be really boring. I think is the
ball would would it go slowly or no the
ball will just go in a straight line.
What makes catch fun is you
throw it in an arc and you run – your
brain is calculating even though you
don't know it, how fast you have to run
to get to where the ball lands when you
are there at the same place at the same
time. So this is going on with every hit
to the outfield, to any hit to
any player in a baseball diamond. They
are not where the ball will sometimes
they are but most of the time they're
not. And so they run and they, timing the
ark of the ball, and so in there is a
calculation of the acceleration of
gravity, the distance, how fast it's
moving, and they catch the ball. Same on
a football field. The quarterback throws
it, and they throw it not to where the
player is but where they will be. So
that's playing catch on Earth. Playing
catching space! It sounds very fun
because you'd be in space. That's the
difference! Well we have this internal
model of gravity in our brain. Yes! Basically
that that's a very succinct way
to say what I just said. Yeah, they've done
experiments as well in the space
shuttles in the late 90s where they've
shot balls and astronauts out of a ball
cannon, which I just think sounds
hilarious. And they've tried to catch
them, but they haven't been able to.
Because it's too fast? Because they're
trying to catch it like they would on
Earth, right? But they can't kind of
anticipate the changes. They can rejigger their
gravitational brain. Yeah so Earth
gravity is interfering with zero g in
their brain assessment of where the ball is
and how fast it will get to them. Maybe
when they see the ball coming towards
them, they want to catch it at a lower
point then it's actual trajectory will
take it. Because their brain knows it's
supposed to sink and that it doesn't.
So they they have to overcome
the one g brain. So maybe that's
what's going on here. But I had this idea
that maybe if we have this internal
model of gravity and we move in a
different way, how do aliens move? Based
on where they come from. If they come from a
planet that has wildly different
gravity – right but not zero g so that's
that's an important distinction. An alien,
right, would not have necessarily earth
gravity likely not be somewhat less or
somewhat more. So what would be funny is
if they come from a gravity that's
higher than ours, okay, that would mean
they're stronger. If they had
our body weight. Then you toss something
to them, they'll think it's like
magically going far, right? You'll throw it
and just oh my gosh! And they'll go to
where they think it should land, where it
would have landed on their planet, but
they got a backup 30 feet because its
arc it's not falling as fast as it would
have on their planet. Aliens are
notoriously stupid. Also alien
baseball, what a game! Terrible at
baseball, let's list the flaws. To be
clear, if the alien is here on Earth,
they're not stupid. Well, well they can't
get your ball, so! How do we measure
intelligence? Well because they built a
ship to get here! What if they were
kidnapped? If an alien is here they
they built a ship, crossed the gap of
interstellar space, we have not left
low-Earth orbit since 1972. They're
smarter than us. Terrible at Earth sports!
You know what would be fun? Having a game of baseball
with nine aliens from different planets.
Okay. What do you think the time
frame is on this? Is that happening soon?
You know, we have to find at least one other
alien so they'll be pitcher catcher.
you know. And then you gotta
fill out the rest of the positions.
That would be a while. And they have to be
like have– And meet up. We'd have to meet up
somewhere. Would the moon be a good place?
Uh yeah but, sure, there's no air there, so
you couldn't throw curveballs or
anything. Oh. Yeah these cosmic issues,
you got to think this through. Right, right. Yeah, ok. So then Cleveland?
That would be funny – Aliens descend on Cleveland.
So this would be, for the first time,
the World Series could be the
Universe Series. Right? Yeah! It could
be. It could be, and then they would mean
it. What if we didn't win?
People never talk about how much
discovering aliens would really make
baseball more interesting. That's an under written about topic.
Yeah! People don't think about that
gravity brain like they should. The gravity brain!
So that is interesting.

Gravity in Your Brain ft. Neil deGrasse Tyson!

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